Sports

St. Basil girls eliminated at OFSAA

The St. Basil Saints senior girls basketball team was eliminated from provincial competition at the AAA Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations tournament on Friday afternoon.

The Saints fell to defending AAA OFSAA champs, Louis Riel, 68-45. It was the third straight loss for St. Basil at the three-day tournament in Kingston, which began Thursday morning.

Rhaelyn Gillespie led the Saints with 13 points against Louis Riel. She said Riel had a couple of girls who stood out and worked hard.

"They were good defensively, but they were really good on the offensive boards."

Gillespie wasn't happy to bow out of OFSAA competition after just three games. But she isn't disappointed with how things went with the Saints in this, her final year with the team.

St. Basil went into the season as the four-time defending city champions. Many people didn't expect them to fare well this year because they lost a number of key players to graduation.

But the Saints made it to the city championship game two weeks ago, where they lost to the Korah Colts 48-32.

Last weekend the Saints won the NOSSA AAA title in North Bay.

"I'm actually very happy. We had a great season overall and we accomplished something that no other St. Basil team has, which is a AAA NOSSA championship. We had fun, we got along well. It was one of my favourite seasons by far," Gillespie said.

Competition at the Kingston tournament was very tough, said guard Anna Stilin, who is also in her final year with the team.

"We expected it to be tough because we're competing at a higher level than we normal would have because it's triple A, instead of double A. But we were still right up there with those teams, we all felt," Stilin said.

The Saints started off on the wrong foot at OFSSA. They went into the tournament ranked 15th out of 16 teams.

Gillespie said the girls were "timid," especially in the first game on Thursday morning, which caused them to be a little nervous. They lost that game 46-40.

"With our first game, we were kind of intimidated by the rankings and stuff and we let it get to us a bit. We shouldn't have," Gillespie said.

The Saints fell behind early in the first game and put up only nine points in the first half. However, they surged in the second half netting 31 points, but ran out of time and eventually lost by six points.

"The first game, we could have won," Gillespie said.

The girls could have been suffering from jitters early on because a number of them are young, Stilin added.

"It was the first OFSAA for a lot of people (on the team). But during the game we got the nerves out and started to play our own game."

On Thursday night the Saints were run over 48-19 after they hit a hot team - No. 2 seeded A.N. Myer from Niagara Falls.

Head coach Jim Pedatella described that game as a "disaster."

"They were a good team," Gillespie said. "They're now in the semi-finals."

Many of the girls were "a little sad" after being eliminated on Friday, Stilin said.

"But we still had a great season overall . We accomplished a lot of our goals this season. I'm very happy."